Active Minds

Ask About This Speaker 

When Lizzie Simon was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at the age of seventeen, she thought she had reached a dead end. At that time there was little information available for her and her family. They suffered threefold together: because of the illness, because of the mental health care system, and because of the myths and misinformation about mental illness in American culture. At the age of 23, Lizzie traveled across the country to interview people with bipolar disorder who had successfully managed the disorder. She wanted to write the very book that she and her family desperately needed when she was seventeen.Since the publication of her popular memoir DETOUR, Lizzie Simon has spoken at over seventy universities and conferences, and worked as a mental health consultant creating content and doing casting for media organizations. Most recently she worked as a consultant and writer on twenty-five video segments for the website Web MD. Lizzie has worked with MTV, where she was a consultant and field producer on a one-hour documentary, True Life: I'm Bipolar. For CosmoGirl! Magazine, she created a multi page package on young women with mental illness. Lizzie was a founding member of The Leadership 21 Committee of The Bazelon Law Center in Washington, DC, whose goal is to discover the future of civil rights for people with mental illness and disability. Lizzie and DETOUR have been featured on CNN, The Connie Chung Show, The Judith Regan Show, NPR, Time Magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, The New York Post, Nylon Magazine, Rhode Island Magazine, and many other radio, television, web and print outlets. Lizzie has been training speakers for 5 years, and is an avid cook, Yogi and slow jogger.

 Promotional Materials

• Introduction

• Promotional Flier

Topics: Recovery and Bipolar Disorder, Stigma in American Culture, Society, and Politics, Memoir Writing, Writing for Advocates